The Boy Who Stayed
by bobissa
Summary: 40 years.  Today.  The Ponds and life after the Doctor.


**Disclaimer:** None of this is mine.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> My first DW fic, God help me. Written for the prompt _Amy/Rory, older age, reflecting on their time with the Doctor_.

The Boy Who Waited

The red-haired man let himself in through the short gate and strolled up the familiar path, rose bushes encroaching in on either side, until he reached the blue front door. He didn't bother to knock; it was generally unlocked, and, besides, he used to live here.

"Mum? Dad?" he called, once inside the house. It was a lovely summer morning, the sky bright and filled with fluffy white clouds, and when he heard no reply he walked on through the kitchen, past the back stairs and out into a large sunroom.

"Morning, sweetheart," his mother said. She sat on a small, pale yellow sofa in the middle of the room, drinking a cup of tea. This bright retreat hadn't been here when he was growing up, the whole of it awash with different shades of yellow and cream. Present were always sunflowers, in some form or another. A few years ago they had had the room built, running the length of the back of the house, and it had quickly become a room entirely his mother's own.

"We weren't expecting you until the evening." Standing, she greeted him with a hug. "The hospital gave you the whole day off?"

"They do have other doctors there, Mum." She raised an eyebrow but quickly grinned playfully at him. "I thought you two might be needing more help than you were letting on about."

"You're a sweet boy, you are. Helping your old mum and dad." She smiled crookedly and raised her hand as if to touch his face or head but made a fist and let it fall back to her side.

"I know how hard you two have worked on this party." He took a seat on the sofa while she busied herself with tea at a small side table. "Especially Dad."

"Oh, that man!" his mother said as she thrust a cup into his hands and seated herself beside him. "He'd have the whole world believe I'm planning and fretting like it's the royal wedding, when really, he's the old idiot outside right now fussing over hanging the lights _just so_." Both leaning a bit to the left, they could easily see his father through the large windows. He seemed happily oblivious to their gawking as he strained to balance himself on a ladder that had to be an antique.

"He's been a complete terror on my phone as well. Twenty text messages I got from him yesterday with terse demands for grocery runs and round table cloths and a glue gun. What does he need a glue gun for anyway?"

"Don't look at me. I'm only married to the man."

"40 years. Today." Watching his mother over the rim of his cup as he sipped his tea, he thought she might make a joke or brush off the accomplishment as she had so many times before. But instead she looked thoughtful, her eyes cast downward, the corners of her mouth hinting at a smile.

"Doesn't happen every day," he added simply. Wishing he had come up with something a little less cliché, he hoped his mother could at least hear the sincerity and pride in his voice.

"You are your father through and through. Do you know that?" Before he could protest or be flattered, she pulled him into a fierce embrace. "I couldn't beat the sentimentality out of either of you if I tried," she mumbled across his back. Just as he was starting to wonder if his mother was crying, his phone buzzed in his pocket and they pulled apart with a bit of laughter.

"It's from him. 'Blue spray paint. Two cans. You know the color,'" he read aloud and looked up to see his dad waving from outside, phone in hand and still atop the ladder.

"If he falls and breaks his neck, I'm still having this party."

"_Mum_," he chided, but she rolled her eyes and watched contentedly as her husband stretched comically to one side of the ladder.

"Anything else that's blue turning up today?"

"I sent them an invitation, so…" She shrugged and sighed and put on her best "that's that" face.

"Psychic paper?" She nodded. Though his sister had been born ten years before him, he had always only ever known her as an adult who popped in and out of his life in a blue whirlwind with no particular regularity or warning. She was more like a cool aunt than a sister, and while his parents never complained about her never calling them "mum" and "dad" or her tardiness at family functions, he knew his mother didn't like being kept waiting.

"She knows it's important. They'll be h-"

"I know you mean well, sweetheart, but saying it won't make it so." His mother got to her feet quickly and made her way over to the table with the tea service. He wanted to get up to give her a hug, but he knew that would only make her retreat more. Instead he sat on the yellow sofa, tracing his finger back and forth over the rim of his tea cup.

"More tea?"

"Sure. Thanks."

/\/\/\/\

When he was a little boy, his parents had loved to tell him thrilling tales of adventures in time and space starring a mad, wonderful doctor and people called Amy and Rory. He believed those stories were real and that the Doctor was somewhere out there saving people and planets and stars throughout the ages and probably even right then. He didn't remember how old he was when he put it all together that the people in the stories had the same names as his parents, but he knew it was at the same time that he stopped believing in the Doctor.

It was quite a shock to the poor child when, on his eighth birthday – well, the night after his eighth birthday actually – the clumsy fellow his sister usually turned up with told him that he had _the best birthday present ever_for him if only he'd put on a fez and follow him into the big blue box parked in the garden. He had never seen his mother so livid or his father's sword actually in his hand instead of hanging on the wall as when they caught him about to walk through that blue door and believe in the Doctor again. Though his sister had marched him right back into the house as his parents yelled things like "too young" and "not yet," he was able watch from his bedroom window some time later as the police box made a loud, magical sound and disappeared.

It had been enough just to know that he was real. He didn't mind waiting.

/\/\/\/\

The house smelled of sugar cookies when he got back from the store, and, unsurprisingly, he found her in the kitchen. Two cans of bluest blue spray paint and a glue gun were in the bag he sat on the counter. For some reason, baking always seemed to calm his mother.

"Can you hand me that, sweetheart?" She pointed to a bowl behind him and he complied.

"You going to bring round Molly tonight?" He knew it was coming at some point or another, best she was getting it out of the way now.

"You know we broke up. You _know_this." The cookies were still warm where he found them on the table and he helped himself to one.

"I liked her. She had some spunk to her, that one."

"It's been three months."

"She wasn't tacky like that _Angie_," she said, the name punctuated with the slam of the oven door to emphasize her distaste.

"I'm not bringing a date to the party, and there's an end to it!"

"Okay, okay. I worry about you is all." She made sure he was looking at her and winked along with a warm smile.

"I know, Mum. Thanks." He grabbed another cookie and sat at the table in silence for a few minutes while she rinsed a few dishes.

"Why did you and Dad stop traveling with him?" He didn't mean to ask it, honestly, and the last thing he wanted was to upset his mother when she seemed so have recovered so well from earlier, but the question had been gnawing at him all the way to the store and back.

It wasn't something he thought about often, but it was one of the few Doctor-related things that his parents had always been vague about. Your sister was born on an asteroid millions of light years away and was raised as a weapon? Your dad was technically plastic for 2000 years? Sure, they'd laid out the details, no problem. But all he knew of their giving up that life of impossible, frightening, wonderful things was that they had left the Doctor and his blue box to make a life in the small town that he still lived in.

He thought at first that maybe she hadn't heard him, but when he looked up his mother had frozen at the sink, her back to him and hand lingering under the faucet. The water cut off and he heard her take a breath as she turned around.

"Time," was all she said.

Years ago, when he was a teenager and had just gotten back from his first trip with the Doctor, he asked his father the same question. Why stop? How could anyone give up something so wonderful? He had answered with something he would never forget. "It was time," his father had said with a sad, stern look on his face. It wasn't quite disappointment or longing, but something in his father's eyes made him feel as if he were pleading with him, so he had never asked again.

His mother wiped her hands on a towel and came to sit at the table with him. "I know why you're asking."

"You do?"

"You know him. You can see why he normally has to move on from people, no looking back. And you know why he hasn't this time." She paused to smile indulgently and continued. "You know how proud your father and I are of you?" He nodded slowly, a bit confused. "Dr. Pond."

"_Williams_," and they laughed at the old joke. When he had traveled with his sister and the Doctor, he didn't even make it the full year he was planning on before going to university. Doctors on Earth actually had to study, after all, and he was itching to get started. So he had hugged his sister goodbye, shook the Doctor's hand and walked out of the blue doors ready to embrace his place in the universe.

"It was the best, the times we had out there. I had my best friend and my husband and it was the best. But time out there isn't really time. Do you know what I mean?" He nodded again and she took his hands in hers.

Though he'd never said so to anyone, he knew his parents were glad that he had stuck close to home.

"I don't want you to think for a minute that we don't have the life that we want." There were tears threatening to fall from her eyes, but she managed to smile anyway.

"I know. Same goes for me, okay?" They both looked down at their joined hands for a moment, and when he heard it, he thought he was remembering it. But an all too real and familiar _vworp, vworp, vworp_came floating in from the front garden to interrupt them.

"That'll be your sister," his mother said, getting to her feet and pulling at her clothes a bit. "From the sound of it I'd say _Mr. Song_is driving." She grinned and asked, "How do I look?"

"Great, Mum."

"I can't believe they're early, well, not like two days early, I mean. Or two days _late_for that matter."

"Miracles do happen, or so Dad tells me." They grinned at each other, their eyes still a little moist. Putting his arm around his mother's shoulders, he began to lead her towards the front of the house. "I just hope he hasn't landed on Dad's roses again."

"If he gets that sword down off the wall – party or no – I'm telling them to run this time."

End.


End file.
